Value For Money

BRITTAC's review of Hilltop - www.hilltop-products.co.uk

Okay, so this company may be good at selling little bits of rubber/plastic but when it comes to this hot cutting knife, I would avoid them like the plague.

Ordered the knife only to discover when opening the box that there was a lot of side to side movement in the cutting blade and the cutting edge of the blade was not clean, ie it had burs and chips out of it. This would leave the fabric cut edges very messy if at all accurate due to the blade movement. Nothing like the product advertised on their website.

Upon contacting them, and having to wait up to 7 days for any responses to emails (this is because they have to wait for a response from their supplier in CHINA) I was told this is acceptable and their other customers had not complained (not seen a positive review either). I asked numerous times if we try out the knife and try and adjust to get it to work would this invalidate our warranty (asked more than three times and ignored every time) I was later told on the phone that it would invalidate any warranty.

After taking out of the box to take images showing the faults in the product, 'out of good faith' we were offered a replacement, so even with blade movement and chips out of the cutting edge, they would still class this as in good working order and as advertised. We also discovered that the post would also need to be tightened as this moved as well, guess what, tightening the post would invalidate any warranty. Just to add, I had to raise a return request to get an email response following sending images (available if anyone wants to see)

Now, this is after 3 to 4 weeks of emails and phone calls and having to deal with a company that does not care about the state of the product they send otherwise they would not have sent it and now feeling that if there are any issues in the future, it would be impossible to get any sort of customer service from them, we decided we wanted to return for a full refund. As the product is faulty and not sold as advertised, by law we are entitled to a full refund including postage paid.

Not only did this not happen, they took a 20% restocking fee which they do not state anywhere on their website, they refuse to respond to any emails or messages regarding this.
When questioning this over the phone, I was told that the product we had returned would just be sent to another customer.
So to sum up, if you want a cutting knife that does not need to be finished properly then you are best of getting the original version which this is a cheap (not so cheap) Chinese copy of and avoid using this company for anything other than bits of plastic. But if you are happy to deal with a company that does not value the quality of product or customer service they provide, then this is the one for you.
Happy to supply copies of correspondence and images showing the state of this item and just to add we would use for cutting nylon and polyester webbing and have been in this industry for more than 15 years, more fool us for thinking a UK based company would check cheap Chinese copy products before sending out to customers.
AVOID, AVOID, AVOID